her away for that operation."

But the white people had not, as they supposed, this anxiety all
to themselves. The timid, conservative, colored mother regarded
the friendship with growing anxiety. And before Scott Kendrick
got together the money to send Ellen to Baltimore, Ezra Jackson's
wife had coaxed her husband into letting Mary Louise go North to
school. The Watauga public schools, with a term or two of Fiske,
at Nashville, afterward, had been good enough for the other
children. But the mother craved wider opportunities for this, her
youngest; money was freer with them now; and Mary Louise went to
a preparatory school, then to Oberlin.

Ellen Kendrick returned from the hands of the surgeons in
Baltimore much improved in health. She was sent back twice
afterward for treatment. Finally she walked as well as other
girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she
might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail;
the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would
continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there
was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very childishness had
its own charm.

Mary Louise Jackson passed one of two vacations at home; but, as
time went on, there were opportunities for her to have trips of
an educational nature, and one summer was spent at a Chautauqua
taking a special course, so that after the first break in their
association the two girls saw almost nothing of each other till
they were women grown. There had been some letters; yet what the
white girl had always demanded and received from her friend could